


Love Unwritten

by dragonwriter24cmf



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Caring Spock (Star Trek), Families of Choice, Friendship/Love, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspective McCoy, Quotations, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:21:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22296985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonwriter24cmf/pseuds/dragonwriter24cmf
Summary: Post 'Requiem for Methuselah'. McCoy wants to take back what he said. Because even if the definition is a little different, he knows, better than most, that love IS a word in written in Spock's book. A very powerful word.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	Love Unwritten

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All characters belong to Gene Rodenberry

**Love Unwritten**

He wanted to take it back. He hadn't even gotten all the way down the corridor to the Sickbay before he realized what he'd said, what he'd done. And then, he wanted to take it back.

It had become something of a habit, in their long journey together. He'd get stressed out, worrying about things, usually about Jim, and snap at Spock. Make jabs at him. Mock him for his apparent lack of feelings, or his Vulcan calm. Spock would retort, and they'd both blow off steam. It was a routine he'd gotten used to, and that he suspected Spock had gotten used to as well. The Vulcan certainly had plenty of comebacks ready, and had even ventured to start the teasing, once or twice. And he'd gotten very good at playing along when Jim teased him. But this...this was different.

Spock hadn't responded. And as he paced the corridor, he knew that he had recognized the quality of Spock's silence. That wasn't Spock's 'I yield Doctor' silence. It was the silence that fell when his words cut a little too deep, when they drew blood from the Vulcan's psyche. The silence that told him he had gone too far.

It was the silence he had heard in the Tholian Web, when he had snarled at Spock after the eulogy for Jim, before they'd discovered the captain was alive. The silence that had made him lean into those blue arms later on the bridge, apologizing for his actions. Blaming it on the spatial intersection and the madness it was causing.

It was the silence he had heard in an alternate-history Earth Roman jail cell, with Spock crouched against the bars not six inches away, when he'd accused the Vulcan of preferring to die rather than expose his humanity, or allow himself to feel and care. Then, he'd been close enough to see the pain he had caused, the flash of anguish, of torment and shame, when he had voiced something that was better left private, better left unspoken. Then, he had apologized and blamed it on his helplessness and his fear for Jim.

Spock always accepted his apologies, greeted them with a slight nod and then went about his business, as if he'd never been cut by McCoy's words. He always accepted the excuses too, with such easy grace that McCoy couldn't tell if Spock believed them or not.

What could excuse this outburst? There was no spatial distortion to warp his mind. Jim was grieving, but not in any danger, so he could hardly say he was out of his mind with worry. He felt sorry for the girl, and for Flint, but he hadn't loved the girl, and his feelings for Flint went no further than basic sympathy and admiration for what the man was and had accomplished in his life. He felt sorrow for Jim, but it was hardly the first time.

_'All these things you'll never know, because the word love isn't written in your book.'_

The words followed him, haunted him, painful in the lack of truth in them.

The type of love that Jim shared so easily with women who came into his life, the type of easy, casual relationships that most humans dealt in...those weren't a part of Spock's make-up, mentally or physically. Casual wasn't his way, and never had been. But love....

No matter how much he wanted to rationalize, no matter how much Spock himself preferred to rationalize it, love....love was very much a part of the Vulcan first officer's character.

Not casual love. Not easy love, that formed bonds within hours, or days. Not the kind of simple, mutable, adjustable love that Jim enjoyed in his relationships to women, or with many of his friends. He knew Spock was capable of it. He'd seen that on Omicron Ceti III, with the spores. But that wasn't the real Spock, not to him. No more than how any man acted when under the influence of any kind of drugs or alcohol. Sober and in his right mind, that kind of casual attachment wasn't in Spock's nature, and probably never would be. But what was...

He had seen it in brief flashes. Rare moments. Like the whole ship stealing thing for Christopher Pike. There was absolutely no logic to what Spock had done, no matter how the Vulcan had rationalized it. That had taken loyalty, and a bond far stronger than mere duty or respect for a commanding officer. And Jim had told him later what Spock had said, about not wanting to risk Jim facing the death penalty. But he hadn't been sure. It could have been an effect of Spock's contact with the Talosians. His defense of James Kirk could have been simple loyalty.

He'd kept an eye out for any more signs after that, but they appeared in such brief flashes that he hadn't been sure of it until that one crazy mating cycle Spock had gone through. But then, he'd heard Spock argue against Kirk's involvement in the Challenge, when he was clearly in no condition to talk. He'd seen Spock's face when he'd revealed that Jim hadn't died. And he knew.

Spock was capable of love, but it was a far more powerful, and in many ways, far more terrible type of love than what humans normally considered love.

There was nothing casual in Spock's love. The bonds he formed took weeks, or months, to be formed. No easy camaraderie. It was a slow process, a slow meshing and adapting of personalities. A lot of humans weren't capable of it, or capable of understanding it. But having both seen the bond formed between Jim and Spock, and formed his own strangely convoluted bond with the Vulcan, he was well aware of it the process, and the result.

The result was a link so strong that it could alter lives. So powerful it had a life of it's own, a force you could almost feel. And for those people whom he had forged such a bond with, there was almost nothing Spock would not do. Give his life. Give his time, his health, his sanity. Trade his body, trade his soul.

To those with whom Spock formed a connection, he would give anything and everything. Possibly even more dangerous, he would even do those things for which the recipients might condemn him. He had witnessed Spock squaring off against Jim, more than once, when Jim needed to be checked, stopped, made to think. There were times he'd been genuinely afraid that the necessity would split the two men for good. But that was Spock. He cared so deeply that he would rather permanently suffer the broken bond than risk the life and well-being of the other person involved to keep it.

He had seen it, in their encounter with the Platonians. Spock had been mentally and emotionally violated, physically injured, publicly humiliated. All of that was horrendous for a Vulcan, a member of such a proud, controlled, contained race. And yet, in the end, what had driven Spock to a destructive and near homicidal fury, had driven him to admitting such anger, had been none of those things. What had driven him over the edge had been the simple fact that he had been forced to assault his captain. To hurt and endanger Jim.

He had seen the evidence of Spock's feelings in the encounter with the Empath Gem as well. With all his turmoil over whether or not to stop Spock as well as Jim, he hadn't missed the way Gem had looked at Spock, the way she'd touched his shoulder. The look in her eyes. In her eyes had been all the things that Spock would not and could not show, and it had nearly broken his heart. That, in combination with the knowledge that Vulcans viewed insanity as a fate worse than death, had been what had led to his final decision to use the second hypo.

For that matter...how many mind melds had he seen Spock perform, over these past years? Spock had confessed to him that it was a deeply personal, somewhat dangerous technique. And yet...how many times? At Jim's request, or to protect the minds of his crew-mates? He remembered the Preservers Planet, where Jim had been stuck for months with amnesia. Spock had melded with Jim then, to bring back his memory. And that after several months of nearly non-stop work, with minimal rest or food. Spock had been exhausted entering that meld, and he had still done it without hesitation. Reserved as he normally was, dangerous as it was, he would drop his shields and open his mind at Jim's request, any time he thought the captain needed him to do so. Such a personal and dangerous thing...what other evidence did he need?

Spock might not understand, or at least not indulge in, casual relationships. But he knew what love was. But for him, it was a powerful, all or nothing emotion. Having seen the limits to which it would drive Spock, he had wondered if all Vulcans felt that deeply, that wildly. And if all their emotions followed the same pattern, that terrifying depth and strength that had the force to shatter a soul.

He'd only once seen a relationship similar to that before he'd met Jim and Spock. And that had been his own relationship with his daughter, Joanna. He'd thought he was that close to his wife, at one time, but distance and contemplation had changed his mind on that front. But still...the thought of having a friendship so tight, so strong and deep that it could compare to a family or parent-child relationship...scared him out of his mind. When he thought about how deeply he was tied with those two, it sometimes made him want to shout for joy, sometimes made him want to hide in a bottle of bourbon and never come out again.

He would never say so to Spock, or anyone for that matter, but if the way Spock loved was a full representation, or worse a half-one, of Vulcan emotions, then it was a damned good thing that race had chosen the path of logic and control.

_'The ecstasies, the miseries, the glorious triumphs, the glorious failures...'_

It was different from the kind of love a man and woman shared, but he suspected that Spock knew quite well all the things he had described. The ecstasy every time they survived and mended fences and reaffirmed their friendship with each other. The miseries every time something broke between them, or in those cases where they'd each had cause to fear one or both the others were dead (the look on Spock's face when he'd 'killed' Jim that one time...). The triumphs, the failures, shared between the three of them.

This was definitely one of those times when he wished he could hide in a bottle for a while. But...his steps slowed, then turned him around. He needed to apologize to Spock. If he let it lie too long, it would be impossible. How he was going to excuse this one, he had no idea, but he would do his best to apologize anyway.

He was almost back to Jim's cabin when the door slid open and Spock exited. One look at the Vulcan's face, and he knew something had happened. To outward appearances, Spock was normal, but there was a slightly paler cast to his face, and subtle slouch in his body language that indicated that something had happened, or been done, which had placed a strain on his mind and body. Then Spock saw him and straightened. “Doctor.”

“Spock.” He closed the distance, and saw the faint lines of strain that proved his point. “What did you do?”

“Doctor?” One eyebrow rose. “I fail to see why you would assume I have done anything.”

“Don't give me that. If you think I can't tell by now...” He gave the Vulcan his best Physician's Glare. “You did something that's unsettled you.”

He had to give Spock credit, he'd learned not to dodge a direct statement like that. Something remote settled in the back of the Vulcan's eyes, a wall he could almost see fall into place. “It is...personal.”

“I'll bet. Does it involve Jim? Cause if it does, I have a right to know, especially if it's gonna affect his mental or physical well-being. That man's in a fragile state right now.”

He saw the concession in the way Spock's expression shifted, just a little. “In point of fact, Doctor, I merely acted to produce the outcome which you yourself suggested might be the most beneficial to the captain's health.”

It took him a moment to understand. Then he remembered the last thing he'd said before he'd left the cabin. “You made Jim forget the girl?”

“Not entirely. To do so would be both unethical and highly dangerous. However...it is possible to safely mute certain memories and experiences, in order to make it easier for the human mind to process them and respond.”

That took him a minute too. “You're sayin' you didn't make him forget the girl, just how much she meant to him. And how much he meant to her.”

“Affirmative. And the exact...circumstances of her death.”

That had hit Jim the hardest, he knew. Not that someone he loved had died, though that was bad enough, but that the reason she had died had been that she had loved him too much to survive it.

There was only one way to change a man's memories like that, at least without far more sophisticated equipment than he had. And now he understood why Spock looked a bit off kilter. To be subjected to the intensity of Jim's grief, even voluntarily, must have been difficult for the Vulcan. He was conscious of how much care and concern Spock would have had for Jim's well-being, to do such a thing.

But it also gave him an opening for what he'd come back to say. “Bloody hobgoblin, you'd do just about anything to prove me wrong, wouldn't you?”

There was a flash of surprise in Spock's eyes, before one eyebrow rose again. “Doctor?”

“I give you that whole damn lecture, and then you go and do something like that for Jim...you're gonna make a liar out of me, Spock.”

“It was not my intention, Doctor.”

“Yeah, well...” He sighed. “It's not your fault, this time. That was a pretty stupid thing to say to you anyhow.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sometimes I forget you do things differently.” He shook his head, then indicated the corridor. “Come on. I could use a bite to eat, and so could you, with the energy you just expended. And we could both use some quiet time before Jim wakes up and comes to find us.”

Spock relaxed, just the tiniest fraction. “I had intended to spend some time in meditation...”

“Fine. You do that. But before that, you can sit down to a decent meal with me, with some of that bloody plomeek soup of yours, and just keep me company.”

That got him another rise of the eyebrow, but also a softening in the lines of the thin face, to what might have been a trace of affection. “Doctor, as Vulcans are vegetarians, I highly doubt that any dish of which I would wish to partake could be described as bloody.”

“You know what the hell I meant. Now come on, unless you think Jim's gonna wake up in the time it takes for both of us to eat. Or if you're that reluctant to eat with me.”

“Negative. The Captain should sleep for some time. And I would welcome the nourishment, and not be adverse to the company, provided you are not in one of your more verbose moods this evening.” Spock fixed an eye on him, and he read in that calm gaze that he was forgiven, and that no more needed to be said on the subject of Jim's feelings, or his own.

“I've said all I needed to say for now.” He returned the calm gaze with one of his own, then turned and started down the corridor, Spock pacing gracefully by his side.

So easy, how Spock had forgiven him. Yet another example of the well-buried emotions that connected them. But he felt the warm glow in his gut, the relaxation in his shoulders, and smiled to himself.

Spock might not have the word love written in his book, but anyone who saw the Vulcan interact with him and Jim would know that their relationship was a picture of the deepest and fullest of that emotion, a bond of brotherhood beyond many forged in blood.

And as the old saying went...a picture was worth a thousand words.

**Author's Note:**

> Rewatching this episode, and the line caught my attention. And then, this story jumped out.


End file.
